The new partnership means creators and merchants can combine commerce and community with the launch of YouTube Shopping to Shopify’s millions of eCommerce brands around the world

 

• Merchants can easily integrate their online store with one of the world’s biggest entertainment platforms—reaching over 2 billion monthly logged-in users
• YouTube Shopping allows Shopify merchants to sell their full range of products in three ways: live streams, videos, and store tab
• Shopify is the retail operating system for merchants and creators selling across multiple channels, making it easy to manage their commerce business from one place

  Today, every brand is focused on one thing: connecting with their audience. Meaningful engagement with consumers is no longer a nice-to-have - it’s a necessity. This shift has put content at the centre of brand interactions, and given rise to the creator economy, blurring the line between merchant and creator. Content creators are selling goods and building fully realised brands, and D2C merchants are creating content as a way to find and engage with new customers. Shopify and YouTube announced yesterday that they are partnering to give eCommerce brands a powerful new way to connect to consumers, build their businesses, and share their stories. With the launch of the YouTube Shopping on Shopify, merchants can easily integrate their online store with one of the world’s biggest entertainment platforms - reaching over 2 billion monthly logged-in users - to meet their consumers, and viewers, where they are. Shopify merchants can sell their full range of products on YouTube in three ways:  

• Live streams: Merchants can tag and pin products at key points during a livestream, and picture-in-picture playback means consumers can watch while they check out
• Videos: Merchants can show a curated list of products in a product shelf below on-demand videos
• Store tab: A new tab will be added to a merchant’s YouTube channel, featuring their entire selection of products

  Because Shopify acts as a merchant’s retail operating system, product details including names, images, pricing, and shipping are seamlessly kept up-to-date in real-time, across channels. If a product sells out, it’s automatically removed from YouTube. Merchants can also track performance of live and on-demand videos directly from their Shopify admin, with a full view of multichannel sales.  "Commerce today is multichannel, and YouTube is one of the most influential channels on the planet," said Kaz Nejatian, VP of Product at Shopify. "Shopify's new YouTube integration will fundamentally change what opportunity looks like for independent brands in the creator economy. We're thrilled to expand our long-term partnership with Google to push the boundaries of D2C commerce on YouTube." “For years, creators have built businesses around their YouTube content, often extending their entrepreneurship into building their own brands, but it hasn’t been as seamless to reach their audience with these products directly on YouTube,” said David Katz, VP of Shopping Product at YouTube. “We’re excited to partner with Shopify to help creators easily bring their stores front and centre for their communities on YouTube, who are increasingly turning to them to shop.”  A few weeks ago, the YouTube teased upcoming features that it claimed would make it easier for viewers to discover and buy from brands. One of the new features will allow a brand and a creator/influencer to go live at the same time to co-host a single live shopping stream. This could effectively double the draw for the event, as each creator would bring their own fanbase to the stream. Another upcoming is something YouTube calls “live redirects,” which will allow creators to start a shopping livestream on their channel, then redirect their audience over to a brand’s channel for fans to keep watching. YouTube Shopping is available now to Shopify merchants globally.